Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [141]
“What?” She moved closer to him.
“You’re my price,” Boomer told her. “When you go down, I’ll walk away.”
“Your type’s not the kind to kill a woman,” Lucia said. “Even a woman like me.”
Boomer stared into Lucia’s eyes and knew there was someone else in the room. He managed to turn just as Wilber’s knife was about to shear his back. It flew past the front part of his right shoulder, but its force knocked him up against a wall and sent the gun he held to the floor.
“I’ve killed your friends,” Wilber taunted, his broken nose giving a deep nasal sound to his voice. “And now you will feel the same pain they did.”
Boomer waited until Wilber stepped closer, then rushed him, landing against his chest, both men falling to the floor. Boomer held back the knife hand and landed three solid lefts to the side of Wilber’s face.
Wilber Graves had firmly pressed a button that should not have been touched. There was an out-of-control rage to Boomer now, fed by the images of Pins, Geronimo, and Mrs. Columbo. He threw punches in a mad fury, breaking his hand against the hard bones of Wilber’s jaw and temple.
Boomer beat Wilber until he could no longer lift his arms. He fell over him, exhausted, lifted his head, short of breath, to look up at Lucia, who still stood above him.
He didn’t see the knife.
Wilber held it with four fingers and lifted it high above his head, barely able to see out of the slit of his eyes. He dropped the knife deep into the center of Boomer’s back.
Boomer let out a sharp yell, and fell face forward. He peered back at Wilber, who was watching, waiting for the cop to die.
Boomer spread his hand out, reaching for the fallen .38. He wrapped his fingers around it, turned at an angle toward Wilber. The killer’s face was a mask of red, his eyes vacant and distant as he struggled to his feet.
Boomer inched up to his knees, the pain in his back sharp, and clicked the trigger on Mrs. Columbo’s gun. “This is from Mary,” Boomer said to Wilber Graves. He fired one shot into Wilber’s stomach and watched him crumple to the floor. “And this is from Carolyn.” The second bullet went into Wilber’s head. The assassin curled into a heap, then never moved again.
Boomer slowly, painfully, lifted himself against the side of the wall, leaving smears of blood in his wake. He walked with stilted, pained steps over toward Lucia, watching her reach behind the small of her back for the gun she had wedged there.
“I’ve never run into anyone like you,” Lucia said, pointing it at him.
“You would have, sooner or later.” He inched closer to Lucia, walking on legs he couldn’t feel. “There’s always going to be somebody like me out to stop somebody like you.”
“And how do people like you do that?” Lucia said.
“Any way we can.”
Before she could move or respond, Boomer took a deep, pain-filled breath and made a leap for her. Her gun exploded, but Boomer never even felt the bullet ripping into his chest. They both fell to the floor, his blood dripping over her designer clothes. He looked into her eyes, saw the flash of anger, the touch of madness that had made her drug runners tremble. But he wasn’t a drug runner.
He was a cop.
Boomer closed a fist and landed two sharp blows against the side of Lucia’s face, knocking her out cold. He then pulled a cigarette lighter from the front pocket of his blood-soaked jeans and clicked it open, staring at the blue flame. He reached behind him and pulled a roll of dynamite from the back of his jeans.
It was Geronimo’s roll.
He lit the forty-five-second fuse and shoved the dynamite down the front of Lucia’s blouse.
Boomer crawled away from her on hands and knees, the pain so real it had a taste. He glanced at Wilber’s prone body for a final time and closed the door behind him with his foot.
He made it halfway down the hall when the dynamite blast took out the entire room and sent him flying toward a corner stairwell.
“The bitch is history, Geronimo,” Boomer mumbled, resting his head against a marble step.
• • •
THE THREE APACHES were all on the second floor.
Dead-Eye had his head down, leaning